I posted the last grades I’ll submit for almost a year from Salida, CO. If you haven’t been here, you should make it a point to come on down… It’s a fun, funky mountain town. We spent the non-rainy part of the afternoon exploring near our loft in downtown Salida. One of our goals on this trip (the main one being taking mountain photos..) is to buy some local art. Andy will frame it for the new place — and we’ll have some really amazing souvenirs..

We’ll be here until the end of the week, then we’ll spend a bit more time in Denver before heading home so Andy can start school.

For those of you who aren’t academics — a sabbatical is a paid period of time faculty use to focus on other kinds of projects. At one point, my sabbatical plan was to finish my dissertation — turned out that I didn’t get to do that — so now I’m going to be working on developing two new online classes. I’ll do environmental ethics and business ethics… so most of my days will be spent reading articles and deciding what needs to be in the class… I really can’t wait.

Many academics have had at least one extended period of time to work on their own stuff. Usually the first time they get to do it is during the dissertation writing process — they’re done with classwork and their main focus is writing. After that they often have summers, release time, fellowships or other ways to pay the bills. I managed to make it all the way to being Dr. Patty without any of these things… the one summer I took off to finish my dissertation I had breast cancer instead. yep, that was a bummer and an unexpected turn of events.

So, I’m very excited to actually get to focus on what interests me…. and to spend some time in the dark room… because, I’m an addict.

But, all of that will start when I get home, for now — I’m on vacation in the mountains, we have a couple of fun, funky pizzas ordered and a few beautiful drives planned for the next few days.